Sunday, 2 August 2015

UNITED STATES: Original colonial leaders discovered buried under the Church where Pocahontas was married..

Archaeologists
have uncovered human remains of four of the earliest leaders of the
English colony that became America under the floor of a Jamestown
church.

The
four leaders have been buried for more than 400 years near the altar of
what was America's first Protestant church in Jamestown, Virginia.

Researchers were stunned to find one of the, identified as Capt. Gabriel Archer,
a vociferous critic and rival of Captain John Smith, was buried with
Catholic artefacts, leading to claims he was part of a secret Catholic
cell or a Spanish spy.

The four include the man was thought to be the first Anglican minister in the Americas, an arch rival of Capt. John Smith, and Sir Ferdinando Wainman, who was believed to be the first knight buried in America.

The
site is the same church where Pocahontas famously married Englishman
John Rolfe, leading to peace between the Powhatan Indians and colonists
at the first permanent English settlement in America.

The
four burial sites were uncovered in the floor of what's left of
Jamestown's historic Anglican church from 1608, a team of scientists and
historians announced Tuesday.

Beyond
the human remains, archaeologists also found artefacts buried with the
colonial leaders — including a Catholic container for holy relics found
in the Protestant church.

Mysteriously,
a small silver box resting on top of Archer's coffin turns out likely
to be a Catholic reliquary containing bone fragments and a container for
holy water.

Archer's parents were Catholic in Protestant England, which became illegal.

So
the discovery raises the question of whether Archer was perhaps part of
a secret Catholic cell — or even a Catholic spy on behalf of the
Spanish.

Researchers
used archaeology, skeletal analyses, chemical testing, 3-D technology
and genealogical research to identify the men who lived and died when
the settlement was on the brink of failure due to famine, disease and
war.

About
30 percent of each skeleton was recovered, and the scientific team was
able to determine the men's rough ages at death, the Smithsonian said.

The Jamestown Rediscovery archaeology team revealed its discovery at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

The museum is helping to study and identify those buried in the church.

The
burials were first uncovered in November 2013, but the scientific team
wanted to trace and identify its findings with some certainty before
announcing the discovery.

Archaeologists
have been studying the site since 1994 when the original James Fort —
long thought to be lost and submerged in the James River — was
rediscovered.

The
team identified the remains of the Rev. Robert Hunt, Jamestown's first
Anglican minister who was known as a peacemaker between rival colonial
leaders; Capt. Gabriel Archer, a nemesis of one-time colony leader John
Smith; Sir Ferdinando Wainman, likely the first knight buried in
America; and Capt. William West, who died in a fight with the Powhatan
Indians.

The three other men likely died after brief illnesses. They were buried between 1608 and 1610.

'What
we have discovered here in the earliest English church in America are
four of the first leaders of America,' said historian James Horn who is
president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation.